It was about a decade ago that Professor E.R.A. Seligman of Columbia
University published his valuable work on the "Economic Interpretation
of History," which gave a great impetus to the study, by historians, of
the economic influences upon political and social development. Professor
Seligman showed conclusively that one of the most potent forces in the
growth of civilization has been man's reaction upon his material
environment. Since that time the pendulum has swung so far in this
direction that many students of history and economics would seem to
think that all of life can be summed up in terms of materialism, that
environment after all is the only important element in the advance of
society, and that mankind is a rather negligible quantity. This is just
as great a mistake as the former practice of ignoring economic
influence, and even so great an authority as Professor Seligman would
seem to tend in that direction.

On the other hand, Mr. George Louis Beer rightly claims that "the chief
adherents of economic determinism are economists and Socialists, to whom
the past is, for the most part, merely a mine for illustrative material.
The latter, strangely enough, while explaining all past development by a
theory that conceives man to be a mere self-regarding automaton, yet
demand a reorganization of society that postulates a far less selfish
average man than history has as yet evolved."[1]

Most thoughtful people of to-day know that the political and economic
elements were just as strong as the religious one in the Protestant
Reformation in Germany, but that fact by no means would lessen the value
of the gains for intellectual and religious freedom that were won by
Martin Luther. Again, bad economic conditions had as much, or more, to
do with the outbreak of the French Revolution as did political and
philosophical unrest. Also taxation, trade and currency squabbles had